


In the Waning Light

by aces



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-02
Updated: 2008-07-02
Packaged: 2020-11-02 06:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: When she was younger, she would never have expected her life to take the course it did.





	In the Waning Light

**Author's Note:**

> _Circular Time_ AU. Nyssa remains on Earth and the Doctor comes back years later.  
I’ve been reading an absurd amount of Margery Allingham lately, so if the Doctor comes off a little like Albert Campion, I apologize.

“And don’t forget to do your homework!” Nyssa watched the boy run off down the street toward his parents’ house and shook her head. She smiled ruefully and went back into the school to tidy up her classroom.

She was putting away beakers and chemicals, reminding herself she needed to take inventory at the end of the week when she felt somebody watching her. “I’m almost done,” she called, thinking it was one of the cleaning staff, “if you want to start next door and come back, I’m sure I’ll—”

She looked up and stopped, still holding a bottle of distilled water. “Doctor,” she said.

“Hello, Nyssa.” The Doctor stood in the doorway to her classroom, hands in his candy-striped trouser pockets, hesitating. “I happened to be passing by, so I thought I would drop in, if that’s alright…?”

She set down her bottle. “Of course it is.” She walked up to him, held out her hands. He looked down at them for a moment, perhaps taking in the wrinkles. And then he removed his own hands from his pockets and let her lead him into the classroom. They sat down behind her desk at the front of the room. He looked out over the individual desks and lab tables, and then he looked at her again with a smile. “Mistress of all she surveys?” he inquired.

“If only,” Nyssa laughed suddenly, spontaneously, glad to see him. “I’m lucky if I can get them to be quiet long enough to listen to my instructions before they accidentally kill themselves.”

“So long as you don’t have them working with anything too explosive,” replied the Doctor.

“It’s the explosions that catch their attention.” She said it so seriously that the Doctor threw her a sharp look, but she was smiling. “What are you doing here, Doctor, really?”

“I told you,” he sounded injured, in the way only he could, and Nyssa would have taken his hand again but she wasn’t sure he would have liked that. “I was passing by. I-I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Of course I am, Doctor,” Nyssa said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He looked at her, seriously, that intent look that reminded her of many conversations with him over the time she had traveled in the TARDIS. Scientific conversations, philosophical conversations, conversations planning how they could get out of their current mess. So different from her father’s intent look when he was in the midst of a discussion with her; he had always seemed to look inward, while the Doctor always seemed to focus his entire attention upon her. And yet, the memory of both faces and expressions brought her the same feeling of comfort, even after all the decades that had passed since she had seen either man.

“I wondered if I had been right to leave you here,” he told her.

“In the end, it wasn’t your decision to make, was it?” she told him. “It was mine. And I’ve never liked regrets.”

“Do you regret staying on Earth?”

“No,” Nyssa said. “No, of course I don’t, Doctor. I miss you, sometimes,” _a great deal of the time_, she didn’t add aloud, “but I’ve made myself a life here.”

“And—Andrew? Are you and he still…?”

Nyssa grinned at him. She could feel the laugh lines around her eyes; she wondered how much changed she looked to the Doctor. He looked exactly the same to her, though his hair might have been a bit shorter. Still young, and bright, and constantly engaged. It was one reason why she liked working with children, rather than students at university—the youngsters still often held that spark of intense curiosity that so often had been eroded away by the necessary cynicism of young adulthood.

Going to university on Earth had, admittedly, been a fairly strange experience for her. A necessary one, in order to get the qualifications to teach, but still strange.

“No,” she said, “no, Andrew and I parted ways several years ago. Amicably,” she added and turned thoughtful. “He was my first romance, you know; I’ll always love him for that.”

“I see.” The Doctor looked a trifle—sad, perhaps, and Nyssa found herself reaching for his hand again after all.

“It’s all _right_, Doctor,” she told him. “We were very happy together. And I’m very happy now.”

“Yes?” He seemed like he didn’t know what to do with the fact that Nyssa was holding his hand, and Nyssa found it ridiculously charming. It was all to do with his look of relative youth, she knew; she felt absurdly maternal at the moment. _I wonder what he would do if I brushed the hair off his forehead?_ She laughed at herself but didn’t attempt the gesture.

“Yes,” she said. “I have my students, no matter how aggravating they can be sometimes. I have my fellow teachers; I have old friends from university and other schools at which I’ve worked. I do some work occasionally for UNIT, when they ask me to—the Brigadier has been a good friend to me over the years. I still have Andrew, and Tom, and Cynthia—you never met either of them.” She leaned forward. “I have friends all over this country, this planet—this universe. Including you.” She squeezed his hand and withdrew her own, sitting back again. “I’m very happy.”

She still traveled, though now she remained only on the one world. She had friends, some of whom were almost as close as family, and she was loved.

When she was younger, she would never have expected her life to take the course it did. But she had found that life rarely _did_ take those expected courses, and she found these days that she didn’t really mind.

The Doctor stood up to prowl her lab, and she narrowed her eyes, watching him. “Don’t you go messing about with anything,” she told him from behind her desk.

The Doctor looked back at her over his shoulder, again with the injured innocence, and again she couldn’t help laughing. “Really, Nyssa,” he said, “as if I would.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you,” she retorted. “I know you, Doctor; you’re just itching to go through what I have in this lab and see what you can come up with.”

“Then perhaps I should take you to dinner,” he suggested comfortably, “so that you can remove me from temptation.”

Nyssa was already pulling her purse out of the bottom drawer of her desk. “I think that is an excellent idea,” she said, and this time the Doctor put his arm around her shoulders as he led her out of the classroom.


End file.
